Famous African American Women

Women that

Women that

Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman whose cervical cancer cells were the source of the **HeLa cell line**, the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research². She was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951, where researchers collected and stored her cancer cells without her consent³⁴. Her cells contributed to numerous important scientific advances, such as the polio vaccine, gene mapping, and cancer treatments.